Homonyms Exercise #1

Homonyms are words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings. A spell-checker can catch our misspelled words, but if a word is spelled correctly yet not used correctly, it won't know to alert you. Many of us know how to spell these words, but make careless mistakes or neglect to proofread their work for homonyms. A common example is writing simple sentences such as "Your welcome." Your should be "you're," the contraction of "you are," as in "You're welcome." Practice here can either make us more perfect or at least more likely to catch our spelling errors. Editing takes time and students often aren't excited to deal with editing much, so the more automatic correct spelling is for homonyms, the better.

Editing is easier when we aren't entirely dependent on spell-checkers, especially when it comes to homonyms. This exercise is mostly to make you a sharper speller, but it may also increase your vocabulary. Many of the definitions used here are from Alan Cooper's website "All About Homonyms" (http://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym_list.html#gnu)

	First name Last name